Sound familiar? Getting kids to eat their vegetables can be a struggle, but they aren’t the only ones who have a hard time consuming the recommended daily serving. According to American dietary guidelines, 3-5 servings of vegetables per day are recommended for a healthy diet. Typically, a serving equals 1 cup of a vegetable - for instance, 1 medium size potato or even a ¾ cup of vegetable juice. Unfortunately, most people (even adults!) have a hard time following those guidelines.

Luckily, we’ve thought of some easy and sneaky ways to add more vegetables to each of your daily meals!

More Vegetables for Breakfast

One of the easiest ways to add vegetables to your breakfast is to make a frittata. Scramble up some eggs and throw in any vegetable you like. Red onions, peas, artichokes, broccoli, tomatoes - the sky's the limit for the vegetables you can use to make a frittata more filling and flavorful!

Another great way to add in veggies to your breakfast is to puree vegetables to mix in with your pancakes. Puree a butternut squash and combine it with your favorite pancake or waffle mix for a delicious and nutritious start to your day.

Pre-Prep Veggies for Snacking

When it comes to snack foods, preparation is key. When you have the option either to munch on a bag of chips or to cut up carrots or peppers to dip in hummus, the more convenient choice will most often win. Setting aside time each week to prep healthy veggies for snacking can make it easier to choose the healthier option during those times.

Purchase a big bag of baby carrots or peapods, and portion them into snack-size bags. Cut peppers and cucumbers for dipping, or have mixed greens on hand for an easy salad. These simple and quick ways can help you and your family ensure that you’re getting your daily servings of veggies in — and reducing the amount of junk food that you consume!

Bulk Up Lunch and Dinner Vegetable Servings

Pureeing vegetables might sound like adding baby food to your dishes, but it is a great way to get your servings of vegetables while also adding flavor to your foods. This is also an excellent way to get your kids or your picky spouse to eat a wider variety of vegetables.

Spinach can be pureed and mixed in with a red sauce, and cauliflower can be pureed and added to meatballs. Spaghetti and meatballs never looked so healthy!

Speaking of spaghetti, why not try your hand at veggie noodles? Zucchini, squash, and even sweet potatoes all make a great vegetable noodle. You can skip the carbs and add plentiful servings of veggies to your meals, and even the kids will enjoy it.

Sneaky Vegetable Adding - Ninja Level

We’ve talked about adding vegetables into all three daily meals - but what about adding vegetables into desserts? Chocolate is such a strong and delicious flavor that it can hide almost any pureed vegetable, making it a great way to sneak some healthy additions into desserts like brownies, chocolate cake, or cookies.

Avocados are a healthy fruit that can be added in by stealth to a sweet treat. Avocado chocolate pudding is a great example, and if you don’t spill the beans, no one will ever guess they are getting a part of their daily fruit requirement in their pudding!

Getting your five servings of veggies each day is just the start of ensuring that you’re living a healthy lifestyle. For more nutritional advice, consult with the doctors at South Orange Chiropractic Center.

Must. Have. Caffeine.

We all have our morning routines. Most of us shower, brush our teeth, get dressed, and eat breakfast. Chances are some caffeinated beverage helps to jump-start your morning, like coffee, tea, or an energy drink. Caffeinated drinks can do wonders for college students heading out to an early morning class after pulling an all nighter or an exhausted mother of three in the middle of a particularly nasty flu season. In doses under 400 milligrams, caffeine is considered safe for consumption by the FDA, and a regular 8-ounce coffee from your corner shop only has 95 milligrams on average. According to an April 2017 study, however, what caffeinated drink you choose can greatly impact your heart’s health.

Much research has already been done about the cardiovascular safety profile of caffeine, but scientists at the David Grant Medical Center on Travis Air Force Base were interested in how energy drinks may affect the heart. The team compared blood pressure and EKG results of healthy individuals after they drank an energy drink or a regular caffeinated beverage. The caffeinated beverage had the same amount of caffeine as the energy drink, but none of the other ingredients, such as sugar, various B vitamins, and taurine, which are found in many of the common energy drinks available now.

Your Heart on Energy Drinks

The results were interesting. The participants who drank the energy drink had elevated blood pressure for up to six hours after consuming the beverage. The participants who drank the caffeinated beverage had only a slight rise in blood pressure. The EKG results were even more revealing. Twenty-four hours after they had the beverage, the results of those who had drunk the energy drink were the same as those associated with life-threatening irregularities in the heart.

Energy drinks are often marketed under the guise they will keep you awake for longer than a cup of coffee or any other caffeinated beverage on the market. There is no research available that says an energy drink with the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee will do more for your energy levels or focus. However, a 2015 Mayo Clinic Study showed that just one 16-ounce energy drink increases blood pressure and stress hormones enough to induce a cardiovascular event.

Natural, Heart-Healthy Energy Boost

If you are a healthy man or woman, consuming a moderate amount of caffeine is fine. However, for an energy boost without caffeine, and with the added benefits of maximizing physical performance, preventing or treating headaches, and increasing weight loss - have a glass of water! Your energy levels are decreased significantly if your body is dehydrated.

Cut Back on Sugar with a Kaizen Plan!

Whether your goal is losing weight or simply making healthier choices, if you’re interested in reducing the sugar in your diet, the Kaizen approach can help you. In Japanese, Kaizen simply means "change for better" or "improvement." Using the same small steps used in countless professions as a way to achieve a goal or desired outcome in their field, you can change your diet for the better and reduce your sugar intake!

Step One: Identify Your Goal

What is your goal? Here are just a few reasons people reduce their sugar intake:

Weight loss

Diabetes control

Overall health

Lower risk of heart disease

There are many reasons to reduce your sugar intake, and all of them are great goals to have for the health and vitality of your body. Keeping your goal in mind will help you to get back up when you stumble and stay on course when you’re tempted to falter.

Step Two: Track Your Goal

If you want to reduce your sugar intake, wouldn’t it make sense to know what your sugar intake is normally? After you have identified your goal, continue to eat what you usually would, but write it all down! Keep a food journal to meticulously track everything you eat for a period of time. This is an important step, as it not only gives you a baseline for your sugar intake, but it also makes you hyper-aware of what goes into your body. According to experts, tracking your food will immediately help you start to make better choices.

Step Three: Compare Current Habits to Goal

Once you have an overall picture of your diet through your food journal, look at the goal you’ve written out for yourself. Compare it to the foods listed in your food journal. How much work do you need to do to make it to your goal? A little or a lot? Do you have more work to do at breakfast or lunch? Are your dinners already healthy?

You should also know how much sugar is recommended for you a day. The American Heart Association recommends that women eat no more than 25 grams of sugar per day, and men should consume less than 37.5 grams of sugar each day.

Step Four: Evaluate Your Goal

What can you change specifically about your diet that will further you on your road to less sugar intake? Can you change out a food for another one that is similar but contains less sugar? If you don’t want to give up your nightly dessert, find a way to make a healthy one that will take care of your sweet tooth, but not increase your sugar intake. For example, did you know that by blending a frozen banana and cocoa powder, you get a creamy ice cream dessert?

Step Five: Start Small

Take your first small step. For example, make your breakfast healthier. Or, if your breakfast already consists of healthy food, start with lunch. Regardless, just start with one meal. Reduce the sugar intake in one meal and make that into a habit. Once that habit is formed, move on to another meal. Or move on to dessert. Wherever you start, the important thing is that you start! The entire philosophy of the Kaizen Plan is to take small steps incrementally that build to big changes over time.

Reducing your sugar intake is an incredibly healthy step to take. If you feed your body the right kind of fuel, you will feel and live better. Come see us at South Orange Chiropractic Center to see what other healthy goals we can help you achieve!

Move Over Green Tea - There’s a New Super Drink in Town.

“For black tea lovers, there may be a new reason to keep drinking it,” says Dr. Zhaoping Li, the director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. Eighty percent of the tea consumed in the United States is black tea even though previous studies have usually hyped the healing and wellness properties of green tea instead.

Luckily for Americans, UCLA researchers have now demonstrated that black tea can promote healthy weight loss and other health benefits due to the way it reacts with bacteria in the gut. While the numerous health and weight loss advantages of green tea have been known for a while, this is the first time that black tea has been shown to change energy metabolism.

It’s All about the Polyphenols

Both green and black teas contain chemicals called polyphenols. Polyphenols have high antioxidant properties and also function as prebiotics, increasing the ratio of good bacteria in gut, which can promote good health and aid in weight management. The green tea polyphenols are small enough that they are absorbed into the blood and tissue throughout the body, which explains the seemingly infinite health benefits of the drink.

The black tea polyphenols are larger though, and remain in the small intestine. However, by remaining in the small intestine the black tea polyphenols promote the growth of beneficial gut bacteria that also promotes healthy weight loss.

There’s Always Time for Tea

With all the research and case studies in the world, there seems to be no downside to tea. Drinking tea throughout the day promotes hydration and offers a more flavorful, zero-calorie alternative to water when there are no additives. Different types of teas typically contain fifty percent less caffeine than coffee, allowing for increased mental alertness without the shock to your nervous system. Furthermore, most teas are chock full of flavonoids, antioxidants which fight against free radicals that increase your risk for heart disease, cancer, and high cholesterol.

Researchers at Trinity College, Dublin conducted a study of over 4,000 Irish adults, age 60 and up, which determined a positive association between daily yogurt consumption and increased bone health.

Researchers measured the bone mineral density (BMD) as well as the physical function of the participants in order to determine their results. Traditional risk factors of osteoporosis including age, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption were taken into account when finalizing their conclusions.

Women who ate yogurt every day had a 39% lower risk of developing osteoporosis when compared with those who did not eat yogurt. The study authors observed a 52% lower risk in men.

Researchers also noted a 31% lower risk in women of osteopenia, a condition which is often a precursor to osteoporosis and involves the old bone being reabsorbed into the body faster than new bone can be created.

Besides promoting bone health, yogurt has numerous other health benefits. A 2016 UCLA study found that a Lactobacillus strain of bacteria, which you can find in yogurt, kombucha, and sauerkraut, can help reduce the risk of some types of cancer. Some yogurts can contain a lot of sugar, however, so it’s important to look for servings that contain 20 grams or fewer, according to Fitness Magazine.

Need another reason to eat some fruit every day? A new study from British and Chinese researchers shows a definite correlation between eating fresh fruit and a lower risk of developing diabetes. Many diabetics tend to avoid consuming fruit, opting for vegetables instead because of some fruits’ high sugar content. However, the results of this study share a different story.

Published on April 11th of this year, the study followed a half million Chinese adults between the ages of 30 and 79 for seven years.

About 19% of the participants reported consuming fresh fruit daily. Participants who had been previously diagnosed with diabetes were three times as likely to report never or rarely eating fruit.

At the end of the study, researchers found that those participants without diabetes at the start had a 12% lower risk of developing diabetes when compared with those who ate no fruit. Across the study, more frequent consumption of fruit was associated with a lower risk.

For participants who were already diabetic when the study started, those who consumed fruit at least three times a week had a 17% lower risk of fatality and a 13%-28% lower risk of developing of complications associated with diabetes such as heart and kidney disease.

This study was purely observational, so there is no clear reason why this correlation exists and results may have been affected by other factors such as the participants’ dietary and behavioral habits. Further research is needed.

The lead author of this study and a research fellow at the University of Oxford, Dr. Huaidong Du said, “The sugar in fruit is not the same as the sugar in manufactured foods and may be metabolized differently. And there are other nutrients in fruit that may benefit in other ways.” So despite some fruits’ high sugar content, this study shows that a daily dose of sweet, fresh fruit could actually prove beneficial for those already diagnosed with diabetes.

In late January of this year, the American Heart Association (AHA) released a statement regarding meal timing and frequency. The statement provides loose guidelines for how to promote your cardiovascular and overall health through your meals and eating habits.

When you eat could be as important as what you eat, as the body and its organs have their own internal clocks. Animal studies suggest that eating during an inactive phase, such as late at night before sleeping, can affect the metabolism, causing weight gain and inflammation.

Meal planning can also help reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, or other cardiac diseases. Knowing what you’re going to eat and when you’re going to eat it, helps you build a healthier lifestyle.

People who consume breakfast daily typically have lower cholesterol and blood pressure than those who do not. People who skip breakfast, as 20-30% of American adults do, are more likely to be obese, have diabetes, and have poor nutrition.

It is still important to have a healthy and balanced diet, high in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, poultry, and fish.

The authors of this report emphasize that more research is needed in order to provide evidence for these claims. While they believe these measures could lead to a healthier lifestyle, they write that larger studies, which track patients’ health over a long period and quantify outcomes, will lead to more concrete results.

Implementing these methods into your daily life may help reduce the risk factors surrounding cardiovascular disease including high cholesterol, obesity, high blood pressure, and insulin complications. While more research is needed to ensure a fool-proof guide to healthy eating, the AHA has provided some useful tips for people looking to promote their cardiovascular health.

“We suggest eating mindfully, by paying attention to planning both what you eat and when you eat meals and snacks, to combat emotional eating. Many find that emotions can trigger eating episodes when they are not hungry, which often leads to eating too many calories from foods that have low nutritional value.”

There are a lot of extreme diets out there today. Low Carb, Paleo, Low Glycemic, and Perricone…just to name a few. It can be a little overwhelming to consider making any change to your eating habits for fear of following the wrong advice. Also, the extreme nature of these diets does little to motivate those of us that need to make healthy changes. Completely overhauling your entire way of eating is very difficult to maintain for long.

If diet and exercise are on your mind as a way to halt chronic diseases in their track, we have good news for you. Preventing diabetes may be easier than you think!

Replacing just 5 percent of the calories you get from saturated fat (think butter and cheese) or carbohydrates (such as bread, cake, and crackers) with unsaturated fats (such as those found in avocados or nuts) could cut your likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes by 22 percent and your risk of heart disease by 7 percent. This is according to a recent analysis led by researchers at Cambridge University in England. (They analyzed 102 studies involving 4,220 people.)

Here’s how this might look in real life: if you consume 1,800 calories per day, that means exchanging a slice of white bread or a 1-ounce piece of cheese for a quarter of an avocado or a tablespoon of peanut butter. That’s it!

For information on natural supplements that can help support diabetes and blood sugar, contact our chiropractors today at (973) 761-0022.